The Power of Moments

Chip Heath and Dan Heath

Certain experiences have an extraordinary impact. We don’t have to wait for them to happen — we can intentionally engineer these moments into our lives, or at least create conditions for them to emerge. This is the premise of the Heath brothers’ latest book that came out later last year. It’s a very easy, quick read full of engaging examples. You should give it a shot if you like some of the ideas below.

Memorable or defining moments are usually peaks, pits or transitions that consist of one or more of the following four elements. Note that we will discuss the phrases in the latter part of this post.

An acronym that you can use to remember these four elements: EPIC.

The phrases in Italics above are how you can create those elements. I will very briefly mention a thing or two about each below:

My favorite example from the book was of YES Prep’s Senior Signing Day. High school seniors walk onstage and announce the college they are choosing to go to in front of the entire school and their parents. This defining moment has all four elements. The Elevation of students having their moment onstage, the Insight of a sixth grader thinking “That could be me”, the Pride of being accepted to college, and the Connection of sharing the day with an arena full of thousands of supportive people. Above all, the Senior Signing Day is an engineered moment. It’s created from start to finish to have a deep impact on the students and their future.

This post is the tip of the iceberg of ideas, examples and case studies presented in the book. The Heath brothers are masters of making academic ideas and studies accessible and actionable through their books. I’d recommend this one as much as any of their other ones.

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